What is it?
The Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program originated from the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act in 2010 and, through legislative mandate, continues to support pregnant people and their families with children from birth to kindergarten entry to hone their parenting skills and to raise children who are physically, socially and emotionally healthy, and ready to learn. The MIECHV Technical Assistance Resource Center (TARC), funded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), offers 1:1, small group and universal technical assistance (TA) support to MIECHV grantees across 56 US states, territories, and Washington, D.C. to help them meet the deliverables of the program.
What Change Matrix does
The CM team provides 1:1 TA and subject matter expertise to:Â
- Support grantees with the development of home visiting programs within comprehensive early childhood systemsImprove the performance of home visiting programs by connecting grantees to technical expertise and by sharing best practices
- Strengthen capacity at state, territory and local levels by supporting and expanding a network of home visiting practitioners
- Support high levels of implementation fidelity and infrastructure for evidence-based and promising programs.Â
In addition, our team creates and facilitates content that supports grantees’ learning/understanding of MIECHV-related topics through webinars, podcasts, written briefs/toolkits, communities of practice and an annual Adaptive Leadership Academy.
Why we love this work
Working with families during a child’s early years has the potential to have physical, social, and emotional impacts that last a lifetime. Research shows that early exposure to positive experiences and environments reduces adversities that disrupt healthy human development and are linked to chronic and expensive health conditions in adulthood. The programmatic work taking place under MIECHV affects outcomes on the larger early childhood system. From a lifespan perspective—and when following a culturally responsive and holistic practice—this work offers an upstream approach to creating systems change from which future generations will benefit.Â
